The UK continues to be a growing hotbed for tech innovation. At Kong, we’re seeing fast adoption for our Kong Enterprise platform in the UK from organizations across a wide range of industries, including e-commerce, financial services, on-demand services and travel/hospitality, among many.

In a competitive world driven by consumers, companies are all facing the same business challenge: they need to make their data available to their business teams, enabling them to deliver better experiences and to streamline operations. IT plays a strategic role here as it can accelerate delivery of trusted data.

This year has been momentous in Kong’s journey as we have tripled in size, outgrown multiple offices and announced a successful Series C round. Today, we celebrate yet another huge milestone with the news that Forbes has included us in their annual list of Next-Billion Dollar companies. We are honored to receive such recognition and to be on the same list as 24 other ground-breaking companies that I can imagine are as elated as we are right now.

In 2010, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) named France the 2016 host of the European Championship. Paris was also set to host the UN Climate Change Conference, COP 21, in late 2015, another major international event with high-stake security issues. How to make sure dangerous individuals would not have access to very sensitive areas?

There's been a lot of discussion around the proliferation of data sources in organizations, and for good reason. There are so many ways to consume data now. When I first started working we would send out paper reports. Then Excel came along and we started sending out spreadsheets. Then organizations tried to control things a bit more, so dashboards were created. While there are more new channels to receive data, none of the older ones have become obsolete.

AI and its enabled tools continue to enthrall business with its promise of efficiency and innovation. But, one of the things AI is also clearly enabling is the bias. We’ve all read the news and heard the scaremongering stories around potential flaws and biases in Artificial Intelligence systems. I believe for this technology to reach its full potential, addressing bias will need to be a top priority.